Pollinator mediated competition: Comparing phylogeny, traits and environment in cloud forest plants.

Rationale

Cloud forest plant assemblages are among the richness worldwide. Hummingbird visited plants make up a large percentage of the plant assemblage. Previous work has shown that hummingbirds feed on plants that match corollas based on bill length. This suggests that plants with similiar corolla morphologies compete for pollination resources. To minimize competition between species, as well as decrease amount of pollen loss due to heterospecific transfer, there should be selection for minimal overlap in flowering timing. While this has been evaluated within a single genus (Stiles 1975) there has been little work in combining relatedness, environment and morphol- ogy in a single framework.

Approach

We collected flower abundance for hummingbird visited flowers along a 1300m elevation gradient in northern ecuador.

We measured three flower morphology traits for each species: corolla width, corolla length and height of plant from ground.

Data

##            Iplant_Double Total_Flowers     Date
## 1       Salvia quitensis             4 10/09/13
## 2       Salvia quitensis            12 10/09/13
## 3 Gasteranthus quitensis             1 10/09/13
## 4   Columnea mastersonii             4 10/09/13
## 5   Columnea mastersonii             2 10/09/13
## 6 Gasteranthus quitensis             3 10/09/13

Flower abundance of top ten species

abun_table<-table(dat$Iplant_Double)
ta<-as.data.frame(sort(abun_table,decreasing = TRUE)[1:10])
colnames(ta)<-c("Abundance")
print(xtable(ta),type="html",include.rownames=TRUE)

	Abundance
Gasteranthus quitensis	1011
Besleria solanoides	913
Palicourea demissa	913
Palicourea acetosoides	424
Columnea strigosa	335
Meriania tomentosa	330
Psammisia ulbrichiana	328
Palicourea lineata	288
Heppiella ulmifolia	285
Columnea medicinalis	279

Flower abundance changes throughout the year and along the elevation gradient.